Reynolds Ghost

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-913311-53-7
Verlag: Knights Of
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 198 Seiten

Reihe: Run

Running. That's all Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But Ghost has been running for the wrong reasons -until he meets Coach, an ex-Olympic Medallist who sees something in Ghost: crazy natural talent. If Ghost can stay on track, literally and figuratively, he could be the best sprinter in the city. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed, or will his past finally catch up to him? READ THE RUN SERIES: Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school running team-a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics if they can get their acts together. They all have a lot to lose and a lot to prove. Not only to each other, but to themselves

A New York Times bestselling author, Jason Reynolds is the winner of more than 30 US and international awards, including the Edgar Award and LA Times Book Prize, Newbery Award, Printz Award, Walter Dean Myers Award and the 2021 CILIP Carnegie Medal.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reynolds, Jason

Leseproben

2

WORLD RECORD FOR THE FASTEST TRY-OUT EVER

AT FIRST I watched through the gate. I was gonna keep moving, but then I saw that there were other people down closer to the track, hanging out, watching the practise. Like mums and stuff. So I joined them. Well, I didn’t sit with them, because that would’ve been weird, but I grabbed a seat on one of the other benches. My school didn’t have a track team, not that I would’ve tried out for it if it did. I was more into basketball. That was my sport, even though I had never really played. Sometimes on my walk home I would stop at the court and see if I could get a pickup game, but no one ever picked me, mainly because the old heads didn’t like running with kids my age. But I always had this feeling that if I could just get on, I’d be the next LeBron. But I never wanted to be the next . . . whoever the most famous runner is. I never even thought about it. I looked in the world records book and it says some guy named Usain Bolt is the fastest, but I had never heard of him. My dad never watched running on TV. Are there even any famous runners? Like, seriously? I never heard of none, but judging from the way these kids were stretching and jumping around on the track, some of them probably had.

“Okay, let’s get some high knees!” the coach was commanding. He was short, and bald, but I could tell that his baldy didn’t come from all his hair falling out. He was one of those guys who shaved it. Actually, he was one of those guys who shaved all the hair on his face except his eyebrows, which wasn’t a good look. He looked like a turtle. A turtle with a chipped tooth, wearing a hoop earring and a black whistle around his neck. “Up! Up! Up!”

There were boys and girls – around my age – everybody dressed in shorts and T-shirts, holding their arms out in front of them, doing a jump-march kind of thing, slapping their knees to their hands.

“Come on, Sunny! It’s only the second day of practise and you’re already slackin’!” the coach barked at the tallest boy out there. He was holding a clipboard and smacked it against his leg. “Get ’em up!”

I sat with my feet spread apart so I could spit the sunflower-seed shells on the ground between them. The salt was making me so thirsty, but I just couldn’t stop eating them. On the track, the high-knee things were followed by jumping jacks, and some warm-up laps around the track, which seemed like a really bad idea to me. I mean, why would you run to warm up? You’d be tired before it’s even time to race. Duh. Then all the runners gathered around the turtle-faced coach.

“Listen up,” he said. “If you are on this track, you have either already been part of the Defenders, or you have been recruited to be part of the Defenders.” He was talking to them like they had just joined the army or something. “I’m sure you all know what that means, but in case you don’t, it means that you are part of one of the best youth teams in the city. We are the people the top high schools come to for talent. And if you go to a good high school and do well on a good team, guess what? You might even get to go to college for free.”

Don’t nobody go to college for free to run no races, I thought to myself, spitting a shell out. I hate when they get stuck to your tongue and you gotta do that spit-flick thing. So annoying.

A weird-looking kid, I can’t really explain what he looked like, well . . . let me try. You know how I said Mr Charles looked like James Brown if James Brown was white? Well, this kid looked like a white boy, if a white boy was black. Wait. That doesn’t make sense. Let me start over. His skin was white. Like, the colour white. And his hair was light brown. But his face looked like a black person’s. Like God forgot to put the brown in him. Wait, is that like Mr Charles or not? Forget it. Anyway, the boy raised his hand.

“Yes, Lu?” the coach said.

“Is it true you ran in the Olympics?” the kid asked.

“Is it true that you didn’t?” the coach shot back, playing him out.

The boy called Lu stood there like he just got slapped in the face by one of Charlotte Lee’s rubber ducks. Like he didn’t know what to do. “U-uh . . . ,” he stammered, not sure of what to say.

“Don’t worry about what I’ve done. Worry about what you want to do. If you stick with me, I can get you there.” The coach wiped spit from the corners of his mouth. “Now,” he said, looking at his register, “let’s see what we can do with you newbies. Lu, Patina, Sunny, on the line!”

The three “newbies” hustled down to the other end of the track.

“Lu, you’re up first. Hundred metre on the whistle,” the coach directed. The weird-looking guy, Lu, was decked out in the flyest gear. Fresh Nike running shoes, and a full-body skintight suit. Like a superhero. He wore a headband and a gold chain around his neck, and a diamond glinted in each ear. All the other runners stood off to the side as the coach put the whistle in his mouth. He held a stopwatch in his other hand. “Ready,” he said through his teeth. Then came the short squeak, badeep! and Lu took off.

It was quick. I mean, this kid was really fast, and when he got to the end of the straightaway, a woman who was sitting on a bench on the other side of the track jumped up and squealed and clapped like this guy was some kind of celebrity or something. I was impressed, not enough to clap – really, I was just happy something unboring was finally happening – but definitely impressed enough to stop sorting seeds in my mouth until he was done.

“Nice job,” the coach said as Lu trotted back over to the side like a pro. Like this was no big deal, and he knew it. He glanced over at me. I spit shells on the ground. The coach also called out a time and scribbled it down, but I didn’t catch it.

Next up was the big goofy-looking kid the coach called Sunny. He was the one getting yelled at when I first got there about not kicking his legs up high enough in the warm-up. To be honest, he didn’t look like he could even walk in a straight line, so I figured this was going to be pretty funny. Sunny got in position, closed his eyes, and took slow, deep breaths. Then the coach blew the whistle, and off he went. I could tell he was pushing as hard as he could, but he just wasn’t going nowhere. It was like he was running into the wind, even though it wasn’t a windy day. Like his shoes weighed a ton or his bones were heavy or something. Nobody cheered for him, and a few of the other kids even laughed.

“We’ll see who’s laughing when we get to the mile,” the coach barked at the sniggering runners. They all cut it out quick. Sunny loped back over and joined the group, unfazed. He didn’t even mind that he had run the slowest I had ever seen anyone run. His sprint was like a jog. My mother could’ve probably smoked him. Mr Charles might’ve even burned him up, and he’s like a thousand years old! The coach gave Sunny a nod, then turned to the next person. A girl. “Next up, Patina.”

The Patina girl was tall, and sprang up and down on her toes, rolling her neck and shoulders, I guessed to loosen up. Her hair was yanked back in a stubby ponytail, with lots of frizz around the edges. When the coach blew the whistle, Patina broke out in a flash, zooming down the track definitely faster than Sunny, but not quite as fast as Lu. Still, I was impressed. I mean, I don’t know a whole bunch of girls who can run that fast. Actually, I don’t really know a whole bunch of girls who run at all. They always be trying to be cute in school, but I’m not mad about that.

“Y’all vets better look out for this girl. She runs the eight hundred like it’s a skip down the road,” the coach said, giving Patina a high five. If anybody complimented me like that, I’d be trying hard not to smile, but would probably slip a little one in. But she, Patina, she just kept it cool and got back in line like it was nothing. I could tell she was no joke.

After Lu, Sunny, and Patina ran, the coach told all the other runners, “the vets,” to line up and show “the newbies” how it was done. So on and on it went, the whistle blowing, one by one, boys and girls on the line, sprinting down the straightaway. Each of their times being recorded. Some were faster than others. Actually, most of the vets were pretty fast, but nobody was faster than the pretty boy, Lu. Nobody. And the coach kept saying stuff like, “Lu’s still the one to beat,”

which was kind of pissing me off because . . . I don’t know. It just made me think about this kid Brandon at school, who always . . . ALWAYS picked on me. Not even just me, though. He picked on a lot of people, and didn’t nobody ever do nothing about it. They just said stupid stuff like, Can’t nobody beat him. Same kind of rah-rah this bowling-ball-head coach was kicking about this kid, Lu. It’s just . . . ugh. I mean, he was fast, but honestly, he wasn’t that fast.

When everyone had taken a turn, the coach started over and gave...